Casinos often present a smoke-filled environment as many patrons enjoy smoking while gambling. For dealers of such games as Blackjack, Baccarat, Pai Gow and the like, those dealers must remain at their positions and stations regardless of the smoking habits of their patrons. Some dealers may experience discomfort or distress as a result of inhaling the secondhand smoke of cigarettes and cigars of their customers.
It has been suggested if riot shown that inhaled secondhand smoke can cause illness including cancer. Thus dealers exposed to secondhand smoke from patrons at their tables may experience the health risks of cancer or other bronchial or pulmonary problems. Furthermore the smoking may irritate the eyes of the dealers and impregnate their clothing with an undesirable odor.
Aside from the illnesses and other effects experienced by the dealers subject to direct secondhand smoke from their customers, illnesses to dealers caused thereby present a cost to the employer by way of lost employee attendance, increased medical costs and premiums as well as perhaps subjecting employers to litigation arising from the environment.
Some approaches have been made to address the problem. One manufacturer, TCS of Las Vegas, Nev. has provided a rail along the dealer's side of the table which includes a number of upwardly directed openings. Air is forced in the rail and through the openings. The drawback of this device is that quite often the dealer will be positioned between the rail and the players and thus the air venting from the rail does not provide any curtain or dilution effect. In fact the air currents created by the upward draft from the rail may tend to draw the smoke into the dealer's face.
In Messina, U.S. Pat. No. 5,441,279, vents are provided at player positions to draw the smoke downwardly, filter it and exhaust the filtered air at the table to the sides of the dealer. A drawback with this design is that, again, the dealer is not isolated from the smoke and in fact the upward draft created by the exhausted air may tend to draw smoke toward the dealer. Still further, the device as described in Messina would not be effective to draw smoke unless the smoking articles are placed close to the table. Thus exhaled smoke from patrons may, as described above, be carried into the face of the dealer. Still a further drawback of this device is that it requires either extensive modifications to an existing gaming table or an entirely new gaming table. This presents an expense which many casinos are not willing to incur.
There is a need for an inexpensive, effective device to attempt to isolate the dealer from smoking patrons. There is especially a need for a device that can be retrofit into existing gaming tables.